by Moulton, CD
Happ looked wary and a bit afraid, but said nothing.
"Maita? Can we live down there in the open?" Z asked.
*Yes. It isn't a comfortable world, but it isn't bad. There are large settlements of four different races. One of them is reptilian, two mammalian and one a sort of odd mix. Consider what we would've been faced with if we'd accidentally found such a world!*
[ We would know immediately from ecological chains they weren't native races and would have immediately assumed they were colonists. Our dilemma would come in trying to figure why such a forbidding world was colonized by so many. We would've found the psiltripium and most of our question would already be answered. Don't get dense on us now. ]
*Well! I stand corrected, Rubberbrain. Tab and Kit – or rather TR and T Six – developed a mass detector that shows the psiltripium from a plazsi away.*
"Let's land," Z suggested. "I want to go away from you with Happ. I want a private conference with him.
"I'm sorry, but even Thing can't come along because it would have to use the floater, which would present a problem."
"I have nothing to say I won't say in Maita's hearing!" Happ insisted quickly. It was evident he was now definitely scared.
[ I think I understand. I know what you two were viewing and I know what Z discovered. Happ, there are things you don't know. I think it would be best you go with Z and talk with him. You don't understand our relationship and you have no least concept of what Maita's really like. I'll simply tell Z to tell you about Tlesson and about the Tristar. The emperor isn't what you think, either. You can say anything you like to Maita, but I don't blame you one bit for being very careful. I think your recent history – which includes the past quarter million years – has well made you wary of machines. ]
*I take it I'm still not going to get a clue as to what this is about?*
"You got it!" Z answered. "When I want you to know something I'll tell you!"
Maita knew somehow it was important to show Happ exactly how the relationship among them was. Perhaps they should have been playing their insult game all along. Thing obviously understood that, which was why it started the dense bit. Happ must have some reason to fear a powerful intelligent machine. There simply wasn't any other logical explanation.
*Maybe I'll decide to leave you stranded here for the next century or so! You can talk all you want!*
[ Hey, Plastic Brain! I'm not going to be stuck listening to your ego for the next century simply because you want to have your gossipy sensors in on every little thing! I'll turn you off! Sheesh! Who the unholy nine hells do you think you are? Anyway? ]
"Ha! I'm the only one who can hope to pilot this rustbucket except for that computer with the missing chips!" Z fired back.
*Peon! I'll have you know I'm platinum coated over the finest stainless alloys. I do NOT rust! As for those missing chips, you impress me as one with a planet out of orbit yourself! That gob of Silly Putty has the gall to call ME a plastic brain?! It's plastic all over! Of all the nerve!*
[ AhHA! I know what it is! After all these years of Z's sexual inhibitions he's finally decided they're stupid! He wants to be ALONE with Happ, now doesn't he? ]
*I wonder if we should tell him Happ's a male?*
[ Do you think it would make a difference? ]
"Hey!" Z cried. "I just want to tell ... make a difference? What the hell?! You cheap plastic imitation of a rubber duck!"
[ I'm a rubber imitation of a PLASTIC duck, Turkey-ass! While you're dumping your stupid inhibitions you might as well dump them all! Wheeee! ]
Z grabbed a tentacle and pulled so Thing let loose of Happ (who was undecided whether to laugh or to panic) to swing around behind Z's shoulders and try to pinion his arms. They wrestled a moment, but Thing was able to spring to the top of the holovid screen. Maita turned off the gravity, but it caught the frame and held.
[ Ha! You've tried that one before! ]
*Have I tried this one?* Maita sent a charge through the frame that knocked Z's hand off of it, but which Thing ignored.
[ Yeesh! I'm perfectly insulated, as you've had demonstrated at numerous times, Dumdum! ]
"What are you doing?!" Happ cried.
"Doing?" Z asked. "I'm going to tie some fancy knots in those tentacles, turn this motorized asteroid off and start my own world here!
"Kneel, peon!"
[ Don't be ridiculous! 'Kneel' comes from 'knee.' Do you see any knees? How the nine hells do you kneel with tentacles! Maita was wrong about you having a planet or two out of orbit! Your brain – assuming you ever had any – went through a black hole! ]
*Ha! You can't turn me off! All I have to do is charge the console!*
"How can you say such things about each other?" Happ cried. "Is there something here that affects your minds?
"How could it affect the machine's mind?"
"We're just playing," Z explained. "We do it all the time. It keeps us from getting bored. Maita doesn't object if we have a private conversation – really. Maita's our friend. It isn't what you think. It's nothing at all like that machine on Wanderlust Island."
Maita suddenly knew what the problem was with the Krofpth! It was obvious once Z said that. Happ really looked scared then.
*Happ, I can reprogram that thing easily. Your ancestors made the mistake of not understanding the literal way a machine works and they made the mistake of not making it truly intelligent. A machine that has no independent intelligence is simply a servo and will do only what it was programmed to do – and it will do it exactly. That thing should never have been given any enforcement powers.*
"You are truly intelligent yourself?" Happ asked.
[ Yes, Maita's intelligent. We call the ship Maita because that's the emperor's name. ]
Z wanted to yell for Thing to shut up, but Thing caught the empathic message and continued.
[ You see, Emperor Maita as one individual can't hope to manage an empire of thousands of worlds so we have the traders guilds and we have thousands of machines to run things. None of those machines are intelligent, but that makes for another serious problem. The logic systems of machines and those of organics are inherently very different. A machine can be programmed to be the most truly benevolent leader imaginable, but it would still lack any actual understanding. It would become a horrible tyrant because its programming would be inflexible. Intelligent machines are the link that makes it work. ]
"The Tslrv were very much wrong about the fully machine-governed society in one important way," Z explained. "You know that. It's what you have on Krofpth.
"Maita, Tab, Kit – their ships, TRD Sixty and T Six, Maita Searcher, Theron – these are all important friends to the emperor and are vital to the system's workings. They constantly interact with organic beings and understand why so many things must be best controlled by being least controlled. Maita understands your plight and will very honestly help you. It's wrong for a race such as yours to be denied contact and interaction with others."
*Your ancestors developed a very strange guilt complex when your race began to mature. It's unfortunate the programmers of your machine allowed that to be put into the program. It isn't logical to the machine that you can atone for things in the past. The past in inalterable. It was given the program to control your race until you DID atone for those old mistakes. The situation became impossible for the machine. It may not relent until the Kropfth have atoned and it isn't possible for you to atone because the past is inalterable – ergo, maintain the status quo at any cost. This is as close to stasis as a machine can make things. Complete stasis is its only option.*
Happ shrugged and looked afraid and defiant. Thing climbed onto his shoulder and used its empathic talent to calm him.
"We gave the machine control of all weapons!" he cried. "We have the choice of doing exactly as it decrees or of being wiped out! It says our guilt is much too deep! It says we have singlehandedly destroyed all hope of this galaxy through our empire and that is one thing it can't change! It say
s it has a duty to see we do no more damage!"
[ And all of that's because of some guilt or shame felt by one or more of its programmers. Do you see how hopeless the situation is for the machine as well as it is for you? ]
"Maita, you are a machine!" Happ pleaded. "Would you help us against another machine?"
*Very certainly. That's precisely why Thing suggested Z tell you about the Tlessarians and Tristar. Let me show you what was meant by that. The Tlessarian brain ships are a more recent example.*
The screen cleared and a condensed version of the battle with the insane machine on EC was shown (Book four, Tristar), then one of the Robot Worlds (Book seven, Zulians and Robots), then one of Tab's fight against the Tlessarian brain clones, which were later manufactured by the berserker brain they had fought at Tlesson (Book sixteen, Machine Made). Even condensed the show took more than four hours and Thing and Z enjoyed it. It was things they had lived through, but was presented in a very objective manner by Maita.
[ You see how Maita reacts to machines gone wild or to machines programmed improperly. It programs literally millions of machines itself so has little patience with putting personality traits of the programmer into the machines. It would be more than rare to find anyone pure enough to leave out ALL their personal prejudices. That's why intelligence is so important in a ruling machine. With that intelligence the machine can logically refute impossible situations. It won't try to follow a faulty program it determines HAS no resolution. If the machine had been given independent intelligence it would have found it was misprogrammed the moment we appeared on the scene. It was immediately obvious to it your ancestors did NOT doom the galaxy. ]
"We'll help with your problem," Z promised. "Don't tell us about it now. We'll see these people here and explore a bit, then talk about it. We'll have to make plans."
*I agree. We don't want that machine to feel it has to protect its programs. That would mean attacking the Krofpth themselves if it really was programmed to destroy the race rather than let them leave the planet again. I very much doubt it would attack you, but we must act as though it would until we know as a certainty that it won't. We must proceed with extreme care.*
[ Why do you suppose it let Happ come along? I'd think there has to be ulterior motive. A machine that intelligent wouldn't allow it without a plan of some sort. ]
"Maita would know more than I would," Z said. "I think that we're a living denial of the thing's program in exactly the way Maita suggested. It knew it the first millisecond it intercepted the first fastcom signal. Here we are, a galactic empire where it was programmed to assume there would never be such again. Its programming told it the acts of the Krofpth race had doomed the galaxy to an eternal barbarism.
"We're not barbarians and we're representatives of a large and progressive empire. There isn't any refutation of those facts. Its programming was screwed up. If Happ knows the history of those programmers he can tell who was the egomaniac among them."
[ Egomaniacal? With that deep a guilt complex? You've got to be kidding! Who was the most insecure? ]
"He thought he and his race were so much born to be leaders of the galaxy forever they had destroyed its chances," Z said. "What could be more egomaniacal than that?"
*Yech! Are you going to start trying to sound intelligent again? Don't you know you always sound silly when you do that?*
[ Oh, come on! How can you tell when he's trying to sound intelligent, Maita? He sounds silly all the time! ]
They kept the banter up all the way out of the ship. There was something akin to hope in Happ's manner. He moved to touch Z and offered to carry Thing awhile. Z felt the long centuries of oppression the people had suffered under the control of a machine that was designed to liberate them. He knew Happ was far ahead of himself and Thing in evolution but still felt protective toward him. Sort of a father instinct.
The first race they contacted was a mammalian race. The people were much like Terrans – what Z called a "Conan the Barbarian" type of massive muscularity and a darkly threatening air about them. Thing withdrew from them, saying they WERE threatening. Instinctively. It was much like walking among one of those street gangs from back when Z was abducted from Earth. There were no incidents, but the crew were glad to soon be back aboard Maita.
The next group were the reptiles. Thing and Z could tell by Happ's reactions his impressions of them were much like Z's had been of the first race. Thing's empathy said much the same about them, too.
The next group was the mixed-features one. They weren't so extreme in their negativity, but it was still there. Strongly.
The same was true of the last group. Every one of these people were dangerous. It was genetic. It was NOT alterable.
They then left the world and put a warning beacon up telling others to stay away. It was a restricted world.
*We learned several important things here. One is that Happ's ancestors were exactly right in that the people brought here were inherent criminals. Another guilt complex bites the comet's tail! Perhaps there was a better way to handle it, but there's definite irrefutable proof down there that their reasoning wasn't faulty to a great extent in that project. Removing those people from their individual society was definitely a move to protect that society.*
[ There's a chance that eliminating those types from a society may have aided them along in an evolutionary sense. It would most certainly make their history less bloody. ]
"Yes," Happ said. "I appreciate what you are trying to do, but I am aware that removal of this type of aggressive behavior might also have led to their decline. No one ever conquered the type."
"We have no evidence their races were ever conquered after you left the empire," Z said. "You're conditioned to accept blame for things on the least evidence while we're conditioned to reject it without undeniable proof. Right's probably somewhere between. It usually is."
[ Try a term like reasonable. That should be halfway between least and undeniable. We are what we are. Shall we go to Krofpth to visit our despotic machine? It's about time to face it. ]
"We still have to make some plan to keep the people safe," Z warned. "We’ll have to know something of the programming of that thing.
"Maita, act as the emperor. Get in touch with TR and find how Tab's inputs work and install whatever we'll need on as small a floater as you can. It'll be up to Thing and me to get it plugged in somewhere. If it's going to attack immediately under certain conditions we have to know what those particular conditions are.
"Happ, you're going to be debriefed when you return. Does that thing have a probe? Will it 'read' you directly?"
"Yes!" Happ cried. "You see how I must not be allowed to have this done or all is lost! It would perhaps be for the best if I were left somewhere to ensure safety of my people."
[ I think not! I'll want a little information, then I'll want Maita to do a few things. We have a probe, but only Maita will ever read it and you can be guaranteed no one else will ever have any access to the information. I think we can defeat this machine by its very programming. We know a clever little trick or two ourselves when it comes to misprogrammed machines! ]
*Agreed! The fact is we've already confused it. Maybe we can extend that confusion to cause a feedback effect. The machine will shut itself down if certain conflicts of an immediate type show themselves.*
"C'mon, Happ," Z said. "Let's go get a meal and rest. These two clowns will plot and plan for awhile. They usually come up with something workable after I fix the flaws for them."
[ Happ, I have one thing to say. This can be done only with your cooperation. I know you still have very strong doubts about Maita, but I'll ask one thing. If Maita were using a ruse to take control of your race would you be any worse off under another machine? Would you prefer to stay as you are? I swear to you we aren't like that, but it's a decision you have’ll to make solely for yourself. ]
"I've made it," Happ replied. "I am very afraid. I am almost terrified I am making the wrong decision, but I
also like all of you and I don't think, deep inside, that Maita would do anything to harm us, but I also know our own machine wouldn't, either. That's my great dilemma.
"Believe me, I don't fear our machine in the ways you may think. I have that to concern me in my thoughts."
"I think your machine would wipe you out," Z said. "Hating to have to do it, but it would do it."
"But I have no way of knowing if Maita would do the same," Happ replied. "I have made my decision. If Maita is unlike my conceptions I think the Krofpth will at least have a challenge. There will be hope. We know we can't fight TAR One, but we could fight an outside enemy."
[ You call the machine TAR One? ]
"Yes," Happ said. "The letters mean something, but I forget what. Some kind of administrative robot."
Happ and Z went up to room two to talk while Thing and Maita used fastcom with TR for the technology and instructions. Maita gave both TR and T6 the new/old method for sending sounds and pictures so they were able to receive clear schematics for all parts very quickly. Thing then went to the cargo bay where it worked with two servos to build the device. It would have to be controlled from fairly close to Maita so TAR-1 wouldn't be able to intercept the flow.
The methods were directly input from TR, who made very complex studies through Tab and was adept at getting anything it wanted from any machine of any type. The secret was to absorb all the information by stimulating a path and reading it passively. Any more direct reading would result in the machine "knowing" it was being read. When the device was completed Thing went to the pilot's dome and curled up in Z's lap to sleep. When they awoke Maita gave them some food and asked Happ to get into a medical box. It made a second device and needed to calibrate it carefully.
Happ would have a very special shield made into his skull with a special antennae system above it laying under the skin. There were no less than nine very carefully set crystals, each in its own hidden socket, feeding to those antennae.